“Fuck you,” I choke.
Dad just smiles coldly. “I'm sorry, Dove. This is what they call check fucking mate.” He leans his elbows on the table and steeples his hands as he levels an icy gaze at me. “You’remarrying the Antonov boy, or I will burn your world to the fucking ground.Is that clear.”
I look away, doing everything I can to hold back the tears.
“Say it, Dove.”
I swallow past the bitter lump in my throat.
“Clear,” I choke.
“Good. This is happening,” Dad mutters. “You’re marrying Bane, and that's final.”
7
DOVE
“Closed-off”is sort of my default mode, and how I typically present to the world.
I’ve also heard the word "prickly" one or two hundred times. Defensive. Unapproachable. Combative. Unreadable.Thorny.
I mean, it doesn’t take a psych degree to understand why I’m like this after everything I’ve gone through.
But yes, all those adjectives are apt. And in the last week, since the video and photos appeared of Bane and I making out on the top of the Empire State Building like some sort of goth-emo romcom, I’ve doubled down on all of it.
My walls are taller. The spikes at the top of them are pointier. I’m even more aloof than usual.
At least my friends at the Zakharova aren’t pushing for any details about it. I guess that's because many of them are from Mafia families themselves, and have been arrange-married.
Bottom line, no one’s being annoying at rehearsals. No one is asking questions I don’t want to answer, or making it weird.Even Val, king of the inappropriate jokes and comments, has been oddly quiet. Everyone's happy to give me space on the subject.
I shiver as the man all in black opens the car door. I step out, reeling in my nerves as I glance up at the tall, gothic building near the northeast corner of Central Park. Whenever I passed this building before, I always assumed it was a museum, or a private library, or home to a mustache-twirling supervillain.
How right I was.
Well, minus theThere Will Be Bloodmustache.
My throat bobs as I look up at the dark, imposing, almost cathedral-like building that Bane calls home because of course he does.
Yeah… Myfriendshave been giving me space on the subject.
My captor is another story.
I pull my eyes away from the gothic spires and gargoyles—yes, really—as the man who drove me here calmly walks over and opens the front door. Passing through a lobby guarded by men wearing black suits and covered in Russian tattoos, we take a brass elevator lined with red velvet up until it stops and the doors glide open.
My guide stays put, wordlessly nodding for me to step out.
“Good evening, miss.”
A man who looks to be in his mid-thirties with handsome features, blue eyes and dark hair,alsodressed in a black suit, nods stiffly as I exit the elevator.
“Master Anontov will see you in the library.”
Master Antonov.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding.
Although, when you think about it, I already feel like I just walked into Bruce Wayne’s gothic house of horrors, what with the marble floors, the dark old-world wooden paneling on the walls, and the gilded, dim chandeliers.
